“I will never forget that thing I said to you,” he’d said.

“Mal, forget it,” he’d told him, although he knew exactly what Malcolm was referring to, “you were upset. It was a long time ago.”

“But it was wrong,” Malcolm had said. “And I was wrong. On every level.”

As he sat with Mr. Irvine, he thought: I wish Malcolm could have had this moment. This moment should have been Malcolm’s.

And so now he visits the Irvines after visiting Lucien, and the visits are not dissimilar. They are both drifts into the past, they are both old men talking at him about memories he doesn’t share, about contexts with which he is unfamiliar. But although these visits depress him, he feels he must fulfill them: both are with people who had always given him time and conversation when he had needed it but hadn’t known how to ask for it. When he was twenty-five and new to the city, he had lived at the Irvines’, and Mr. Irvine would talk to him about the market, and law, and had given him advice: not advice about how to think as much as advice about how to be, about how to be a curiosity in a world in which curiosities weren’t often tolerated. “People are going to think certain things about you because of how you walk,” Mr. Irvine had once said to him, and he had looked down. “No,” he’d said. “Don’t look down, Jude. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a brilliant man, and you’ll be brilliant, and you’ll be rewarded for your brilliance. But if you act like you don’t belong, if you act like you’re apologetic for your own self, then people will start to treat you that way, too.” He’d taken a deep breath. “Believe me.” Be as steely as you want to be, Mr. Irvine had said. Don’t try to get people to like you. Never try to make yourself more palatable in order to make your colleagues more comfortable. Harold had taught him how to think as a litigator, but Mr. Irvine had taught him how to behave as one. And Lucien had recognized both of these abilities, and had appreciated them both as well.

That afternoon his visit at the Irvines’ is brief because Mr. Irvine is tired, and on his way out he sees Flora—Fabulous Flora, of whom Malcolm was so proud and so envious—and they speak for a few minutes before he leaves. It is early October but still warm, the mornings like summer but the afternoons turning dark and wintry, and as he walks up Park to his car, he remembers how he used to spend his Saturdays here twenty years ago: more. Then he would walk home, and on his way he would occasionally stop by a famous, pricey bakery on Madison Avenue that he liked and buy a loaf of walnut bread—a single loaf cost as much as he was willing to spend on a dinner back then—that he and Willem would eat with butter and salt. The bakery is still there, and now he veers west off Park to go buy a loaf, which somehow seems to have remained fixed in price, at least in his memory, while everything else has grown so much more expensive. Until he began his Saturday visits to Lucien and the Irvines, he couldn’t remember the last time he was in this neighborhood in daytime—his appointments with Andy are in the evenings—and now he lingers, looking at the pretty children running down the wide clean sidewalks, their pretty mothers strolling behind them, the linden trees above him shading their leaves into a pale, reluctant yellow. He passes Seventy-fifth Street, where he once tutored Felix, Felix who is now, unbelievably, thirty-three, and no longer a singer in a punk band but, even more unbelievably, a hedge fund manager as his father once was.

At the apartment he cuts the bread, slices some cheese, brings the plate to the table and stares at it. He is making a real effort to eat real meals, to resume the habits and practices of the living. But eating has become somehow difficult for him. His appetite has disappeared, and everything tastes like paste, or like the powdered mashed potatoes they had served at the home. He tries, though. Eating is easier when he has to perform for an audience, and so he has dinner every Friday with Andy, and every Saturday with JB. And he has started appearing every Sunday evening at Richard’s—together the two of them cook one of Richard’s kaley vegetarian meals, and then India joins them at the table.

He has also resumed reading the paper, and now he pushes aside the bread and cheese and opens the arts section cautiously, as if it might bite him. Two Sundays ago he had been feeling confident and had snapped open the first page and been confronted with a story about the film that Willem was to have begun shooting the previous September. The piece was about how the movie had been recast, and how there was strong early critical support for it, and how the main character had been renamed for Willem, and he had shut the paper and had gone to his bed and had held a pillow over his head until he was able to stand again. He knows that for the next two years he will be confronted by articles, posters, signs, commercials, for films Willem was to have been shooting in these past twelve months. But today there is nothing in the paper other than a full-page advertisement for The Dancer and the Stage, and he stares at Willem’s almost life-size face for a long, long time, holding his hand over its eyes and then lifting it off. If this were a movie, he thinks, the face would start speaking to him. If this were a movie, he would look up and Willem would be standing before him.

Sometimes he thinks: I am doing better. I am getting better. Sometimes he wakes full of fortitude and vigor. Today will be the day, he thinks. Today will be the first day I really get better. Today will be the day I miss Willem less. And then something will happen, something as simple as walking into his closet and seeing the lonely, waiting stand of Willem’s shirts that will never be worn again, and his ambition, his hopefulness will dissolve, and he will be cast into despair once again. Sometimes he thinks: I can do this. But more and more now, he knows: I can’t. He has made a promise to himself to every day find a new reason to keep going. Some of these reasons are little reasons, they are tastes he likes, they are symphonies he likes, they are paintings he likes, buildings he likes, operas and books he likes, places he wants to see, either again or for the first time. Some of these reasons are obligations: Because he should. Because he can. Because Willem would want him to. And some of the reasons are big reasons: Because of Richard. Because of JB. Because of Julia. And, especially, because of Harold.

A little less than a year after he had tried to kill himself, he and Harold had taken a walk. It was Labor Day; they were in Truro. He remembers that he was having trouble walking that weekend; he remembers stepping carefully through the dunes; he remembers feeling Harold trying not to touch him, trying not to help him.

Finally they had sat and rested and looked out toward the ocean and talked: about a case he was working on, about Laurence, who was retiring, about Harold’s new book. And then suddenly Harold had said, “Jude, you have to promise me you won’t do that again,” and it was Harold’s tone—stern, where Harold was rarely stern—that made him look at him.

“Harold,” he began.

“I try not to ask you for anything,” Harold said, “because I don’t want you to think you owe me anything: and you don’t.” He turned and looked at him, and his expression too was stern. “But I’m asking you this. I’m asking you. You have to promise me.”

He hesitated. “I promise,” he said, finally, and Harold nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

They had never discussed this conversation again, and although he knew it wasn’t quite logical, he didn’t want to break this promise to Harold. At times, it seemed that this promise—this verbal contract—was the only real deterrent to his trying again, although he knew that if he were to do it again, it wouldn’t be an attempt: this time, he would really do it. He knew how he’d do it; he knew it would work. Since Willem had died, he had thought about it almost daily. He knew the timeline he’d need to follow, he knew how he would arrange to be found. Two months ago, in a very bad week, he had even rewritten his will so that it now read as the document of someone who had died with apologies to make, whose bequests would be attempts to ask for forgiveness. And although he isn’t intending to honor this will—as he reminds himself—he hasn’t changed it, either.